Daily Archives: March 17, 2016

Honestly Overwhelmed

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Ya know how physically ill people are encouraged to “take a sick day”? Such compassion isn’t shown when you have a mental imbalance. There’s no leeway for “feeling low”. No tolerance for being so stressed you’re having random panic attacks. No “there,there” pat on the shoulder when it’s all you can do not to sink to the floor under the weight of how dark your own mind is…

I definitely needed a “mental health sick” day today. I don’t know what happened but I got my ass kicked by a band of mood assassins with mad skills. Getting my kid to school was all I could do. I came back home and tried to get comfy but I couldn’t get manage that or get warm. I couldn’t enjoy a smoke. Then my stepmonster called to let me know my former father in law passed away and that made me so sad. He was such a wonderful man. It upset me and I was stressed already (the car was acting funny when I took her to school) so I took a Xanax. Even though I had planned errands today. I ended up falling asleep.

I woke up several times but apparently needed the rest because I didn’t pry myself up until noon. Hate napping. Lately it’s become  a once a week thing. I keep saying to myself it’s all the med changes and stress mucking it all up…I hope that’s all it is. It has just been one of those days where my mind is dark without a direct cause and my entire body feels heavy and leaden. Just refilling some ice cube trays was taxing and yeah, I know how pathetic that sounds.

Then it got worse for I picked my kid up and had two random panic attacks. The kind where it feels like an invisible kick to the gut and you can’t catch your breath or understand why suddenly something you do every day is causing you to spaz out…On the way home Spook asked why the car smelled bad and I saw steam or smoke coming from under the hood. When we made it to the drive I popped the hood and something was definitely hissing and steaming or smoking and I know fuck all about cars…Called dad and stepmonster, they said to check the fluids. That was when I saw as I kept pouring in coolant it just leaks out from under the car faster than I can fill it. FUCK. I cannot catch a break.

So I am packing a gallon of water in  the car and driving it til it blows up BECAUSE R TOLD ME THE RED CAR WAS ROAD READY AND NAGGED ME ABOUT THE LICENSE ON IT…The cockweasel says no, it’s not ready, it needs a couple of hoses and this and an oil change and…WHAT THE EVERLASTING FUCK? If it wasn’t ready, why nag on me about this shit???? Now he’s all sad sacking cos he got hit with taxes and business has slowed down and he doesn’t have any time to meet all the demands we’re making of him…And I am driving an iffy car, while waiting for him to get his shit together so I can get the stuff done at the DMV.

I am super pissed as I was lead to believe I needed to get it off Ursula’s property ASAP. But if he won’t give me the key because it “still needs work” and mom is on my ass about getting rid of the brown car so she can transfer her license to her new car….

“Good intentions” is just a euphamism for “I’m gonna make your life miserable but you can’t complain because I meant well.”

The Mundanes should be so forgiving of bipolar mood swings where we mean well but things go wonky…

I am just…honestly…Overwhelmed. The housework is piling up. This car thing is driving me nuts. (But thanks to those kind souls who contributed to the fundraiser, I can at least get her on the road legally as soon as my jackass friend the mechanic can fit the car into his schedule.)

It only got worse tonight.My kid was playing with a friend, then that friend wanted to go play with her cousin elsewhere, so my kid had a half hour long bawling screaming fit, punching herself in the head. I actually gave her a swat on the butt for that one, if only to get her attention and make her stop. Ridiculous.

So I started to panic and had to do my anxiety exercises. She kept screaming and bawling so she was hyperventilating so I had to talk her down with breathe in, breathe out…

Just a big ball of suckage this day.

To make matters even worse (I misspelled my own name yesterday, does it get worse?) I missed a deadline on some paperwork so her food stamps got canceled. I gotta go fix that but how can I when everyday is a “will the car work” lottery.

I got another identical notice (that makes FIVE) about the donor being garnished for support but the clock didn’t even start counting until March 8th so it could be June before I see a cent from him, never mind the Jan. and Feb and March he was supposed to mail in himself to keep current until the garnishment kicks in. I don’t know any amount of money is worth this fucking stress. Everyone told me I’d feel so good holding him accountable and it’d give Spook a better life and…It’s just a bunch of red tape strangling me right now.

As is my kid’s tantrum de jour. Now she is all but swearing at me for not having spare batteries for her LeapPad. She thinks I am gonna risk it with that stupid car to go buy her batteries. Yeah, right.

I know my whining about money and all the stress gets old. Damn, it’s old to me, too. I am always waiting for life to improve, even the tiniest bit, but I have to jump through so many hoops, by the time it all aligns, it takes one little thing for it all to start slipping again.

I want a job. Seriously. I want out of this disability pit where everyday I have someone or something remind me I am somehow subhuman for being on disability, for getting food stamps. My own kid asks me why I “won’t” work. I know I am a decent-ish person yet this shit has me filled with self loathing on a daily basis. And the way I am so med resistant, I don’t see any end to it because I can’t be the one thing a job requires. Stable.

It’s all frustrating and stressing and…Fuck a big fancy bag. I’m tired of talking about it. Living it is more than enough.

On an ending note…I am leaving the fundraiser site up. I am still several hundred into debt to my dad and R, so any tiny bit can help along the way. I guess the best thing I can say in response to “begging for money”…If the shoe were on the other foot, I wouldn’t hesitate to help a friend in need, even if it was a five dollar bill or a home cooked meal.

I like to think there are others out there who think the same way instead of obsessing over ten dollar Lattes and fifty dollar lattes.

Maybe that’s why I go out as rarely as possible. I don’t want to be proven wrong, to witness that people really are as bad as my depressive brain says they are. If I lose that last glimmer of hope, that sliver of faith…One day the depression’s gonna win.

I need to believe in the fairytale of kindness.


Fear is everywhere, it is anger, it is anxiety, it is hopelessness and so much more. How do we help ourselves overcome those?

Fear is everywhere, it is anger, anxiety, hopelessness. It is a primal emotion which has helped us survive, evolutionarily. But now our fear response can be triggered because of non urgent events. And we can react by getting angry, getting anxious, having all the negative emotions. It activates our fight or flight or freeze response. We can become habituated to feel fear, anger, anxious, hopeless, etc, etc. And we try to get away from these emotions, we run away from them.But that doesn’t work. What do we do about it? We accept it, we sit with it in meditation. Every time we feel fear and anger means we have hit a boundary in our life. Meaning fear is at the outer limit of what is acceptable to us. We have reached our limits. And we experience fear. We can sit with it, we can push against it and this is growth. When we reach out outer edges, we can either be fearful, or we can accept the fear and push back, and that is where growth happens for us. So as frightening as fear, anger, anxiety are, they are the catalysts for our own growth!

Keep listening, she’s really good!


Is Good Really Stronger Than Evil?

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Hmmm, according to this article, after doing a good deed, your strength increases! But your strength increases after you do a bad deed as well. So it’s up to us to choose wisely.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/positive-prescription/201602/is-good-really-stronger-evil?utm_source=FacebookPost&utm_medium=FBPost&utm_campaign=FBPost

Fiction abounds with incredible feats of strength. In the real world, too, strangers and neighbors perform incredibly physical acts—lifting cars off babies, raising fallen trees off trapped victims. Is it all adrenaline rush or is something else going on?

Harvard psychologist Kurt Gray thinks he’s figured out a key ingredient to feats of extraordinary strength in the real world. After a few simple experiments, (link is external)Gray concluded that moral activity has a distinct, measurable effect on people’s capacity for physical endurance and strength—he calls it “moral transformation.”

To put it to the test, Gray measured the physical strength and endurance of test subjects before and after they contributed to charity. After their charitable act, the test subjects were stronger and their physical endurance greater: Each was able to hold weights and hand grips longer than before their philanthropic contribution.

Not all tales are clear-cut good vs. evil. In fiction, as in real life, villains have power, too. And Gray’s theory of moral transformation most certainly has a dark side. In addition to testing the morally transformative power of “good” or charitable acts, Gray had test subjects scribble tales of doing harm to another human being. These “wicked” test subjects exhibited just as much higher strength and physical endurance as the “kind” group, leading Gray to conclude:

People perceive those who do good and evil to have more efficacy, morewillpower, and less sensitivity to discomfort. By perceiving themselves as good or evil, people embody these perceptions, actually becoming more capable of physical endurance.

The lesson for all of us is to use our power wisely. Being kind and being cruel empower us, and it’s up to us to make the right choice. At the very least, help out a stranger or give a dollar to someone in need on the way to the gym—not only will the world be a better place, but you’ll have a better workout.


Hugh’s Weekly Photo Challange: Week 17 – Calm

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A lake in Brandenburg KY. A beautiful calm day with a canoe.

 

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A filly in the Churchill Downs stable. She was so sweet and let me get so close to her, a lovely horse!


Take This Job And Shove It

In A.A. you frequently hear people refer to someone as “doing a geographic.” A person who does a geographic is one who refuses to accept that drinking is the cause of their problems and believe life will get better if they move somewhere new and get a fresh start. I’ve also seen this take place […]

The post Take This Job And Shove It appeared first on Insights From A Bipolar Bear.

Take This Job And Shove It

In A.A. you frequently hear people refer to someone as “doing a geographic.” A person who does a geographic is one who refuses to accept that drinking is the cause of their problems and believe life will get better if they move somewhere new and get a fresh start. I’ve also seen this take place […]

The post Take This Job And Shove It appeared first on Insights From A Bipolar Bear.

Walking Out of Therapy

Twenty minutes into my therapy session today I grabbed my things, mumbled “I don’t want to be here.  I’m sorry.” and ran out the door before Sadie could do anything other than sit in shocked silence.  I was crying by the time I stepped out into the sunshine, and despite making stops at three stores […]

I deactivated my Facebook again

I sometimes feel like I’m being held hostage by Facebook, but I decided that, if I feel deactivating is good for my mental health, I should deactivate. A lot of people act like I’d be unreachable, but I have quite a few websites, including one with my name in the domain. Many people have my email, some have my phone number, many know what my websites are (if not this one, then the others). So when people say “I will miss you,” what I hear is: “I don’t even care about you enough to spend the time it takes to write a text message or email. I can’t be bothered communicating with you unless you use a site that you passionately hate.” And if I’m not worth the time it takes to write an email to me, then I figure, they aren’t worth my time, either.

It’s more of the same shit I’ve done my entire life: continued to do things I hated and be around people I don’t like just because otherwise, there would be no people in my life. I don’t care anymore. If there aren’t any people in my life, that’s fine. That’s better than being subjected to things that upset me all the time. And Facebook does upset me a lot more than it should, especially since having more mixed and manic episodes since last summer

I think it’s partly just laziness, though; people are used to not having to write emails anymore. I don’t care. I’m sick to death of Facebook. I’m not going to keep using it just because it’s convenient for other people.

I had a page for this blog on there, but Facebook only shows posts to 10% of followers anyway, and probably not that many unless they interact with the posts in some way (liking, sharing, commenting). I think I only ever had one post “like” on there, so I doubt anyone even sees the links I posts on that page, so it’s no big deal that the page doesn’t exist anymore since I deactivated my personal page.

Additionally, I think it’s nice to have to practice some sort of restraint with writing on the internet. If I post here, I feel compelled to write in full paragraphs and to more or less stay on topic. Facebook encourages people to either share things from other people, or to post one-sentence statuses fishing for “likes.” As stated before, people never really like or comment on my posts, probably because of either my attitude problem or the fact that I write entire paragraphs (often on disturbing on controversial topics). I never really integrated into the culture of Facebook, I suppose. I used it for things it wasn’t designed to be used for (discussion, posts with more than two sentences, etc.).